From the Civil War to Jet Planes in a Single Lifetime

A quick hit of the Great Span for you: the bearded fellow standing in front of that F-100 fighter jet in 1955 is William Lundy, | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

“Who Do You Want To Be?”

The University of Tasmania recently awarded an honorary doctorate degree to Hannah Gadsby, who then gave an address to the gradu | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Cosmic Relaxation

Eight hours of ambient chillout music over images pulled from NASA's photographic archive of nebulas, galaxies, planets, and oth | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Camouflaged Portraits

Cecilia Paredes takes photos of herself blending into elaborate backgrounds. You can see more of her work at Colossal, Len | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Mindbending Lego Sculpture

Ok you're going to have to trust me and just watch this -- telling you anything else would spoil it. I've seen it a couple of ti | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Lightyear

Pixar is doing an origin story prequel of Toy Story called Lightyear. The teaser trailer is above. Chris Evans is taking over fr | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Fun Algorithmic, Puzzle, and Mathematical Typefaces

The father-son duo of Martin and Erik Demaine make typefaces that are algorithmic, mathematical, or puzzle-like in nature. For ins | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Dave Grohl Plays Drums Along with the Original Recording of Smells Like Teen Spirit

At an event for the release of his recent memoir, The Storyteller, Dave Grohl got behind his drum kit and played along with the | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Learn How Roller Skates Are Made

A few weeks ago, the New York Times for Kids section (aka the best section of the newspaper) showed us How to Build Roller Ska | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Icebergs Are Swimming Sculptures

Since 2003, photographer Olaf Otto Becker has been documenting the decline of the glaciers and ice sheet in Greenland.Gr | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

A Prototype of the Original iPod

To mark the 20th anniversary of the iPod, Cabel Sasser shared some photos of one of the coolest artifacts in the Panic Archives: | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Historical Reconstruction of the 1915 Ford Model T Assembly Line

Using photos and films made in the 1910s and 1920s, Myles Zhang made this animated reconstruction of Ford's Model T assembly lin | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Winners of the 2021 Close-Up Photographer of the Year Competition

Contestants from 55 countries entered over 9000 photos in the Close-Up Photographer of the Year competition for 2021 and n | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

A Celebration of Opening Title Sequences

From Patrick Willems, a history and celebration/defense of movie opening title sequences. They have fallen out of favor over the | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Wind Turbine Wall

Designer Joe Doucet's Wind Turbine Wall is both a kinetic sculpture and a way to harness wind power to create electricity.Wind | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Orbital Planes, a Photographic Ode to the Space Shuttle

Roland Miller has been documenting space exploration for more than 30 years and his latest book, which he's funding via Kickst | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Flingbot: A Robotic Artist That Flings Paint

Artist & engineer JBV has built a robot artist called Flingbot that works by throwing paint at a canvas according to a numbe | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

The Simpsons Library

The Simpsons Library Instagram account has been documenting all of the books, magazines, and other printed matter that has | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Producer Butch Vig Breaks Down Iconic Nirvana Songs

In these tantalizingly short videos, legendary producer Butch Vig details how the songs on Nirvana's 1991 breakthrough album N | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

“Drawing in the Air”

Korean artist Lee Sangsoo makes these minimalist yet expressive sculptures of animals, people, and objects. And they're perhaps la | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

The Unchosen One

The latest installment in the excellent Almost Famous series from the NY Times and Ben Proudfoot is about Devon Michael, who as | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

How Radiohead Wrote the Perfect Bond Theme

For his YouTube channel Listening In, Barnaby Martin analyzed the theme that Radiohead wrote for the 2015 Bond film Spectre, a s | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Honest Weights, Square Dealings

Ahhhh, The Verge has published an excerpt of Tamara Shopsin's LaserWriter II, "a coming-of-age tale set in the legendary 90 | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Date of Viking Visit to North America Pinpointed to 1021 AD

Using samples of chopped-down wood left behind by Viking explorers at their settlement in Newfoundland and known chemical markers | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Trailer for Season Two of The Great

Oh, I'm excited for this one. I'm not saying The Great was the best show I've seen over the past couple of years, but it's defin | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

The Design of TV Key Art

When the TV watching experience moved from checking "your local listings" or TV Guide and surfing channels with your rem | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

The Sounds from Mars

For the last nine months, NASA's Perseverance rover has been rolling around on Mars taking photos and doing science. It's also b | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

A People’s Archive of Sinking and Melting

For the last ten years, artist Amy Balkin has been collecting artifacts related to the climate crisis. The collection is cal | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Swirling Clay Landscape Sculptures

Alisa Lariushkina uses air-dry clay to make swirling sculptures that look like landscape paintings. Lariushkina's patterns a | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Formats Unpacked

From Storythings, a weekly newsletter called Formats Unpacked that takes a close look at different ways to tell stories and packag | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Captain Kirk Goes to Space: “It’s Indescribable”

Last week, William Shatner finally got a chance to boldly go where he hadn't actually been before: into space. And upon returnin | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

A Small Store

Always great to check back in on the work of Me Kyeoung Lee, who has been drawing delicate & detailed portraits of conve | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

The Slow Moving Coup

Others (like Timothy Snyder) have been saying this for months and years, but in a succinct 8-minute monologue, Bill Maher1 lays | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Google’s Self-Driving Car Gyre

Folks who live on 15th Street in the Richmond district of San Francisco report that an abnormal number of Google's self-driving ca | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Star Wars Oil Paintings

Check out these expressive impressionist oil paintings of scenes from Star Wars by Naci Caba. (He also does paintings of L | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

An HD Walking Tour of the Giza Pyramids

If you, like me, haven't had the opportunity to visit the Giza Pyramid Complex outside of Cairo, Egypt, this 2-hour HD walking t | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Eight Hours of Floating in Space

This is 8 hours of an astronaut floating in a colorful galactic sea accompanied by ambient music, i.e. the sort of thing you wou | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

The Graphic Edition of “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century”

Originally written as a Facebook post in the wake of the 2016 election, Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

The Winners of the 2021 Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The Natural History Museum in London has announced the winners of the 2021 Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest. Phot | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Trans Dudes From History

In a two-part video series called Trans Dudes From History, Jackson Bird tells us about some historical people who were probably | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

The Most Important Device in the Universe

You've probably seen it: a dual-tubed generator console that's appeared in movies and TV shows like Star Trek (all of them, pret | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Reimagining Dinosaurs

The fossil record has provided us with so much information about plants, animals, and organisms that lived hundreds, thousands, | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

The Trailer for The Beatles: Get Back

If you're even just a little bit interested in The Beatles, popular music, or making creative work, The Beatles: Get Back looks | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Fuzzy Moths Taking Flight in Super Slow Motion

In trying to explain what you're about to see here, I cannot improve upon the Dr. Adrian Smith's narration at the beginning of t | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Is the 3-Pointer Breaking Basketball?

The three-point shot has become the focus of the offensive strategy of every successful NBA team. But is it also making the game | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

The Most Iconic Book Covers

From Literary Hub, The 25 Most Iconic Book Covers in History. Some good ones shared in the comments as well. (thx, serge) | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Previously Unpublished Photos of Indigenous Culture in Alaska Circa 1927

In 1927, photographer and ethnologist Edward S. Curtis travelled to the US territory of Alaska to photograph indigenous peop | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago

Entering the Acceptance Phase of the Pandemic

In the United States and in many other countries around the world, we're slowly shifting away from the Covid-19 pandemic to SARS-C | Continue reading


@kottke.org | 2 years ago